


make believing that I have a soul beneath the surface

by ivyalexandrias



Series: coping with my emotions by hurting the mechanisms [1]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Death, Dismemberment, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Self-Hatred, Time Loop (Kinda), extra warnings in note, this isnt edited and i cba to reread it., vent fic, void copes with yais trauma by hurting lyf for 1k words: the fic, whoo boy okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:28:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27800788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyalexandrias/pseuds/ivyalexandrias
Summary: goodbye for the last time / will you be trying to prove it / I'm dying to lose it / I'm losing my confidence
Relationships: very breifly implied violinspector
Series: coping with my emotions by hurting the mechanisms [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034037
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	make believing that I have a soul beneath the surface

**Author's Note:**

> whats up! *bursts into tears*  
> i wrote this at 1am sorry for any typos. anyways more complex content warnings: slight unreality, repetition, a few sentences that could be read as non-con, mental degradation (kind of?), death, lyf blaming themselves for their situation (again, kind of). lmk if i missed anything.

Lyf has lost track of how many times they’ve been torn apart. Their limbs are ripped from their body like an insect’s, and they scream and shout and fight against the thousand thrashing tentacles that hold them in place, but more of them pile into their mouth, stretching their jaw so wide it cracks, hanging useless from their skull, burrowing down their throat until they can’t breathe, gagging for air as their vision goes black.

Then, like someone hitting the rewind button on a remote, it starts again. If their death wasn’t different every time, they’d almost think this was just some hallucination, cooked up by their brain in their final moments. This time, a tentacle slams through their stomach, punching a hole through flesh and viscera, splintering their spine. It writhes inside of them, carelessly tugging at organs, yanking them haphazardly from their torso as they cry out. Eventually, it finds their heart, and they feel it _squeeze_. Rewind, start again, die again. They’re ripped in half, they’re choked to death, they feel a hundred tiny tendrils squirming through their veins and tugging them apart from the inside out.

Lyf finds they prefer being torn limb from limb. Sure, the pain is worse in the moment, but it takes less time in the long run. Somewhere, in the small part of their brain that isn’t consumed by _pain pain pain make it stop why me what did I do to deserve this_ , they think about how fucked up it is that they have a preferred method of death. That part of their mind gets smaller every day, though. They wonder what will happen when this is all they know. Will they grow used to it? Will the tentacles finally tire of them, and let them rest? They aren’t sure they want to know.

Sometimes, Lyf swears they see someone else. Loki, watching with a pained and sympathetic expression, mouthing apologies that are swallowed by their own screams. Marius, reaching out for them with his metal arm, trying to fight through the sea of writhing, shining tentacles. Their own mother, watching with disdain as they fail her yet again, like they always have. They couldn’t even do this right, huh? All they had to do was get out of their star system. It was _such_ an easy job, and they fucked that up too.

When, inevitably, their audience suffers the same fate they are, Lyf still finds they enjoy their mother’s suffering the least. Even after everything, she’s still their mother, and they still love her, against their will. At least she doesn’t scream like Marius does, though. Because Marius _does_ scream, crying out obscenities, and pleas, but usually just their name. It’s times like that when they wish they could move their hands enough to cover their ears.

They’re on the train, they’re in their home, they’re in their mother’s hospital room, they’re in Marius’ cell, they’re everywhere and nowhere. Lyf watches with sick fascination as their surroundings shift and blur and change, fuzzy like television static as scenes melt into one another, all filled with the same sick backdrop of their suffering. This time around, the tentacles have decided to take a different approach, slithering and slinking into every entrance they can find, sinking into their eyes and ears and mouth, and _Gods,_ this is the worst one yet. They whimper and scream and sob and shake but the tentacles don’t move and they don’t let Lyf go because they never do because this is their _punishment_ and they don’t know what they’re being punished for but surely they deserve it and if they just take this _like a good girl_ then maybe it will be over sooner and maybe it will stop _hurting_. Their curses turn into an endless cycle of _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please stop please stop it won’t happen again I promise I’ll be better I’m SORRY_ and they can’t remember what they did but maybe if they make promises it will be over. (That’s not how it works, though. They know full well that’s not how it works, but sometimes one has to fool themselves into believing something in order to survive.)

(Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they stopped surviving.)

Lyf has lost track of how many times they’ve been torn apart. They’ve stopped even trying to keep count. Instead, they try to picture their life back on Yggdrasil. They try to remember the faces of their friends and family. They’re enveloped in soft, warm memories. Happy Yules spent with their mother and father, laughing with their coworkers as they get drinks on the weekends but wait no that isn’t right because their coworkers hated them and they never knew their father and oh Gods they can’t trust their own mind anymore what can they do what can they do what’s going on who are they who is Lyfrassir Edda is that them is that their name they can’t _remember_ everything is a blur is someone calling their name someone is talking to them and they know them who is that they know them and it’s Marius it’s Marius Marius Marius Marius they know him and he knows them and everything is going black and maybe this is finally the end.

Lyfrassir Edda dies with Marius’ name on their lips, still reaching out for him as invisible tendrils pull them back.

Lyfrassir Edda dies in his arms as he carries them towards the med bay, trying to hold in the blood pouring from a hundred holes in their body.

Lyfrassir Edda dies on the operating table as Raphaella tries to figure out what is happening to them.

Lyfrassir Edda dies a hundred thousand million times more until Raphaella wraps her hand around a piece of swirling bismuth metal and _pulls._

Lyfrassir Edda wakes up on a bed, with Marius’ coat wrapped around their shoulders, and promptly bursts into tears, because there’s nothing pulling them apart or piercing their flesh or trying to push itself as far into them as it can get. Later, they will cry because there are no scars, no proof that it ever happened to them. They will cry again because they woke up with an octokitten curled around their arm and for a split second they were back in that horrible place.

They will cry a hundred more times, but they will always wake up again, and they will always have someone to fall against, someone who is _solid_ and _real_. And that is more than they ever asked for, and they will never quite believe that they deserve it, but they’ve never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.


End file.
